Position: Chief Layout Editor Timeframe: August 2006 - June 2007 Location: Vienna, Austria Key technologies: Adobe InDesign, Illustrator and Photoshop

I was recruited to join the Vienna International School Yearbook team as Chief Layout Editor after working in the same role for the school’s independent student magazine, The Spotlight. Just like with The Spotlight I worked as part of the core team of three together with another layout and the faculty advisor of the project. Together, we planned the development of the book from basic ideas and concepts at the beginning of the year through to the production deadline in April and, finally, the book’s distribution I June. We coordinated the efforts of the 15 member Yearbook team and maintained consistent communication with other stakeholders involved in the project, including the publishing/printing company and the school administration.

Working on the Yearbook was an extremely valuable and powerful experience, helping to significantly mature my publishing layout, organization and communication skills. As Chief Layout Editor I was responsible for the overall look and feel of the final product, which required balancing design consistency with exciting variation. The job started at the beginning of the year by laying out an initial plan with the other two core team members and ensuring the availability of the necessary technology for creation of the book. We then moved on to a training phase where the two layout editors would prepare weekly lessons on how to use Adobe InDesign and Photoshop, presented to the other team members. This was an important part of the project, where having to teach the basics of publishing and layout design helped the foundation of my skill set. We emphasized a “hands-on” approach in teaching, where the team members were given templates to work on as part of an “interactive” lesson. We also prepared a set of general templates, which could be altered according to a set of design rules and requirements that we laid out for the book.

In the period between January and March, we coordinated the content generation phase, where we assisted the other team members with whatever they needed to complete the content and layout of their pages before our internal submission deadlines. This part of the job was not too difficult, however, as we had the pleasure of working together with some truly amazing people whose collective talent, commitment and enthusiasm made for a great team.

The month of April brought with it the “crunch” phase of the project, where the two layout editors were responsible for looking through each of the book’s 375 pages twice, ensuring consistency and fluidity in the layout. During this time, we kept in contact with the publishing company which we had contracted to print the book to ensure that all of the pages met the technical requirements for printing. In addition, we had to work with the school administration to ensure that the content of the book was appropriate to be distributed among a community with members representing 101 different countries, along with numerous religions. Once again, this made for an interesting balance in the project between meeting a set of requirements and still producing an exciting product.

Working on the Yearbook required strong use of my organizational skills to ensure that all 15 team members were able to produce their pages according to our specifications, to ensure fluid communication between stakeholders and, finally, to ensure that we met all internal and external project deadlines. Whereas The Spotlight provided me with my first exposure to publishing design, the Yearbook helped to mature my design skills and gave me true appreciation of the design process in relation to a large-scale publishing layout project. It provided me with the skills and the confidence to embark on a countless number of personal and larger-scale design projects.